The "crash nearly every year" claim doesn't stand up to scrutiny as I see between 2003 and 2008 nothing crashed at all or nothing they were prepared to admit too.It seems the litoral waters of Scotland feature rather heavily and the Isle of Skye more than once.One would think after all these years we could at the very least run around Jockland without too much going wrong.

A list of groundings and collisions involving icebergs, trawlers and even yachts released in response to a Parliamentary question charts 16 separate incidents since 1988.

It led to warnings that cuts in the naval budget had already left some senior officers â€œfrighteninglyâ€ inexperienced at commanding vessels at sea.

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One has to wonder whether this is indeed a valid observation.

Not sure what the ratio of Officers to Ratings is on boats (being a skimmer) but in General Service, I'd guesstimate under 10% of your average seagoing war-canoe is made up of commissioned officers in non-training billets.

In overall manning the RN has one officer for every 3.88 ratings*, (compared to one RM Officer in every 8 RM Other Ranks)

One would therefore wonder, when it comes to voluntary & compulsory redundancies to meet the 5.5K manpower reduction over the next 5 years, where the axe will fall if we aim to give our Officers more seagoing experience.

At present Officers are "shortage category" in terms of recruitment whereas the average rating category has to wait anything between 18 months & 4 years to join.

The "crash nearly every year" claim doesn't stand up to scrutiny as I see between 2003 and 2008 nothing crashed at all or nothing they were prepared to admit too.It seems the litoral waters of Scotland feature rather heavily and the Isle of Skye more than once.One would think after all these years we could at the very least run around Jockland without too much going wrong.

The "inexperience" in Officers is mainly due to the loss of our smaller units - MCMVs/PP and smaller FF/DD. My grandfather Commanded four Ships, and he was not unusual from his generation. About the only way you could Command Ships these days is to go P2000, MCMV, FF/DD, CVS/LPH/LPD - the likelihood of achieving all that and still be "usual" is frankly nil; the CO's of our Capital Ships are nearly all shoe-in's for Flag Rank.

Add in the fact that at the same time we are recruiting from an older pool of POCs (average age on entry is about 23, as opposed to 13, or 18), and you've instantly lost another 5 years sea-going experience.

I'd be interested to see the Officer:Rating split if the FAA we stripped out, as I suspect they skew the balance slightly. There are more CPO than Mid - Lt Cdr according to NS' document; does that actually mean anything?!

I believe in the early years of nukes, the COs had already served as No.1 and to do that had to pass Perisher and chalk up a commission in command of a diesel boat. In between there would be a surface job as No.1 and possibly a frigate command as Cdr, all conditional on getting a good chit from his succession of COs. On the surface bright chaps were given a CMS or even an IMS before or soon after their half stripe and there were also odd bits like SDMLs about for Lts. So the weeding process started earlier. Alfred's point about later entry then becomes important as before grad entry came in a Lt would become such with his w/k ticket at age 22 1/2 or less. Lt Cdr maybe at 29 1/2 if a bright spark with max seniority gain by which time he would be in his fourth seagoing appt, with a good chance of having learned from someone else's groundings and collisions.

In the war of course we had Lts commanding fleet destroyers and we had Lts commanding diesel boats in the 50s. At that time 35 was 'too old' for submarine service; a Lt Cdr CO would then go GS to climb the greasy pole to Flag, much helped by his early Command experience. It could be noted that Cunningham did nearly nothing else but command ships from Lt on until he got his flag.

Blame it on the Survey Navy. In the late 80`s doing similar thing I notice that in places round that area that the last time it had been surveyed was in the 1850`s from a rowing boat with a lead and line, soundings every 2 cables 8O . At the time some tankers were having trouble with underwater sea mounts that didnt apear on charts :? between the inner and outer Hebrides.

The "inexperience" in Officers is mainly due to the loss of our smaller units - MCMVs/PP and smaller FF/DD. My grandfather Commanded four Ships, and he was not unusual from his generation. About the only way you could Command Ships these days is to go P2000, MCMV, FF/DD, CVS/LPH/LPD - the likelihood of achieving all that and still be "usual" is frankly nil; the CO's of our Capital Ships are nearly all shoe-in's for Flag Rank.

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Are there any CO`s of Capital Ships/ Flag Officers who havnt been a Submarine CO first (without bouncing them)?

I believe in the early years of nukes, the COs had already served as No.1 and to do that had to pass Perisher and chalk up a commission in command of a diesel boat.

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They still have to pass perisher and do a sea draft as No1 before getting a command, obviously the diesel boat bit has gone out the window. We did have on Lt on my last boat who had done a stint as skipper of one of the NI squadron and was going for perisher when he got the recommends.

I believe in the early years of nukes, the COs had already served as No.1 and to do that had to pass Perisher and chalk up a commission in command of a diesel boat.

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They still have to pass perisher and do a sea draft as No1 before getting a command, obviously the diesel boat bit has gone out the window. We did have on Lt on my last boat who had done a stint as skipper of one of the NI squadron and was going for perisher when he got the recommends.

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OK, not boats, but going back quite a few years to the early 1900s or thereabouts. Midshipmen had independent commands of a 56ft Steam Picket Boat as part of their growing up.
Theirs to crash,bash ,ground, navigate & generally learn ship handling, in all weathers and times of day or night.
I would surmise that it sharpened up many for when they came to larger ships.
Is there anything like this nowadays??